Last week we posted the Intro into Social CRM, covering the effects of working in a social media environment: what they can mean to the business in general and especially to the customer facing operations.

Before we dive to any practical observations, let’s study the situation again: these days players have the ability to convey any kind of messages out in the world wide open web, as instantly as you would decline any jackpot winnings withdrawal (yes, yes – only until “conducting a further security investigation”…). The nature of these messages is mostly personal of course although once getting annoyed or overjoyed with a certain service, customers tend to share their experience with others. They may either LIKE it (no Thomas, not lick… and stop trying, only dogs can reach there!), or otherwise, they may sing about it on YouTube, warn peers on forums, or if needed, open groups on facebook dedicated to people like you.

So overall, some of your customers, who enjoy a wider reach, can in fact spread messages faster than others. Those are the “Influencers”, or “Tribe Leaders”, as they can indeed affect other people behavior, much like a cult. On the IT side of things, you will obviously require some features allowing you to know what’s being said online about your brand through all kinds of social media tools. It’s called “monitoring the air waves”: knowing what’s being said – allows you to at least understand how deep you are covered with negative feedback.

The good news is that it works both ways, and as such, social Media allows you to proactively listen to your customers. And being proactive is the best part of your work, as well as being able to tell your mom that you are dealing with “Online Marketing”.

So now you need a strategy. You are aware of what is being discussed outside, and you understand that there are those mighty influencers out there. How, oh how, would you solve this puzzle? Being both cool and analytic fanatics, we will start with segmentation (yes, you never saw this coming, and you are in a complete shock): your CRM tools should have the ability to feed into the BI application the info from your gaming reports, and create a matrix along with the social networks sniffing findings. Now you can create a below-the-radar map with highlighted “Islands of Power”, in which you can point those players who have the potential of reaching out to other already existing players of yours. In fact, you can even identify a large group of your players who follow a certain Opinion Leader who is NOT engaged with your brand, the lowlife bastard, and work together with that cute blonde from the Acquisition team to somehow recruit him. Haha, the perks of being in the position you are!

Back to reality. Once you do know your enemy, as a creative promotional wiz, you need to think of ways to reward such key players. But wait – are they indeed your key players? What if these specific influencers are really nothing but small, occasional players without any major impact on your daily revenues?

Here is the real kebab: in modern iGaming world, NGR should be calculated using additional factors on top of direct driven net loss. You should now evaluate your players, in terms of their importance to the brand’s overall business view, and as such, you may find yourself bumping a player into the highest VIP tier, simply because his blog is being read by few dozens of your other existing regulars. The conclusion is: it doesn’t matter where your income is coming from, whether it is from a player who is a big spender, or from a sporadic player who can create the same exact profit using collateral revenue streams. AKA promoting your services to fellow players, both existing and new ones.

CPA prices might continue to rise dramatically, but implementing a solid Social CRM approach will definitely assist your brand by maximizing the players’ lifetime value. At the end of the day, it’s all about the bottom line.